Oxygen Not
Included was not optimistic about my first attempt to build a space colony.
While cycling through the random name generator for my settlement, one of the names it suggested was 'Space Trainwreck'. I, a veteran of management sims from
Dungeon Keeper to Dwarf Fortress, was not impressed by the implication.

'I’ll show
you!' I said to my computer monitor in a way that didn’t make me look at all like a madman. I accepted the game’s mocking moniker and resolved to make
Space Trainwreck the best darned Space Trainwreck there has ever been (which
isn’t hard when you consider the number of times trains and space have
encountered one another).

And darn it
if I didn’t do a bang-up job. Space Trainwreck may not have been the prettiest
space colony ever devised. One might have observed that the outhouse should not
have been built over hydroponics, and perhaps there were a few too many
electrical wires running through the water supply. But everybody had a bed,
there was plenty of food, and most importantly, there was sufficient air to
breathe.

Then I tried
to build a shower, and it all went wrong.

Before we
delve into the douche-related demise of Space Trainwreck, let’s go over where
Oxygen Not Included hails (or should that be ‘inhales?’) from, and what the
developers are attempting to do to make it stand out from the colonial crowd.
Oxygen Not Included is developer by Klei, the Canadian studio famed for its
skills at artistry and remarkable ability to hop from genre to genre. From the
kooky survival sim Don’t Starve to its marvellous tactical stealth game
Invisible Inc, Klei possesses an almost uncanny mastery of both visual and
mechanical design.

Oxygen Not
Included is no different, although its appeal is less immediately obvious than
its predecessors'. It’s a colony sim in the vein of games like Dwarf Fortress
and Rimworld, but it plays from a side-on view and at a smaller scale compared
to the heavyweights of the genre. Indeed, you begin a game with just three
colonists, or 'Duplicants', who must lay the foundations of your colony, with
more duplicants arriving at frequent intervals as your colony grows.

The setting
is the randomly generated interior of an asteroid, filled with all manner of
minerals and materials which you can dig out to help construct your colony and
sustain your duplicants. These range from sandstone that can be used to
construct basic floor tiles, to 'algae' which can be turned into a basic
foodstuff for your duplicants.

Everything
you’d expect from a colony sim is present and correct in Oxygen Not Included. You
don’t control duplicants directly. Instead you assign them certain jobs such as 'Digging' or 'Research', and they figure out a plan of action for themselves.
Duplicants also have basic needs that must be met, such as eating, sleeping, and
stress relief, the latter of which is particularly important, as stressed out
colonists can go off the handle, binge-eating or just running around breaking
stuff like whopping great space toddlers.

In addition,
Duplicants possess more specific personality traits that can positively or
negatively affect the colony. One of my colonists, a silver-haired fellow
called Abe, excelled at virtually every job in the colony. But he was also a
narcoleptic and would randomly fall asleep in the middle of a research project
or repairing a machine.

All of this
is both well balanced and brilliantly presented, with Klei’s trademark art and
animations lending the game a lively and lightly comical tone. But it’s nothing
we haven’t seen before. Moreover, the game doesn’t possess the level of depth
of either DF or Rimworld and so can’t produce the same quality of bonkers
emergent stories which both games have become so well known for.

Where Oxygen
Not Included attempts to stand out is in its gas simulation. Not only must you
ensure that your Duplicants have enough food and protect them as best you can
from physical and mental hazards, you also need to ensure that the air in the
colony is breathable. You’ll start off in a small oxygenated pocket of the
asteroid. But your duplicants will soon respire that into carbon dioxide.

Hence, you
need to either locate other pockets of oxygen inside the asteroid or produce
your own through various means. At a basic level, this can be achieved by
converting algae into oxygen through the originally named 'Algae oxygenators'. However,
Algae is also your starting foodstuff, which means it gets consumed quicker
than jelly and ice-cream at a child’s birthday party. To survive long term, you
must build pipelines to pump gas from one location to another and find ways of
filtering oxygen from water and other gases.

Consequently,
Oxygen Not Included soon shifts from being a basic colony sim into a far more
complex game of constructing elaborate pipelines and automated systems. Physics
plays an important role, too. Heavy gases sink to the bottom of a room, while lighter
gases rise to the top. Mining into a pocket of CO2 from the bottom up is a bad idea,
as it’ll flood your colony with toxic gas. What’s more, as you expand the
colony, you’ll need to deal with other gases such as hydrogen and chlorine.

Water is
also a problem, as you’ll need to harvest it for growing plants and keeping
your duplicants clean, but accidentally digging into an aquifer can flood your
colony, leading to hypothermia and, if the water is or becomes polluted, the
spread of disease. This is also how the plucky duplicants of Space Trainwreck
met their untimely end.

I spent ages
constructing an elaborate plumbing system that would pump water from a nearby
aquifer, carry it to my newly installed shower and toilet, and then dispense
the polluted water into a walled-off cavern I’d dug out specifically for the
purpose. But one of my duplicants unwittingly dug out the bottom of the aquifer
while laying the pipes, causing a massive flood throughout the colony. This led
to a long and arduous mopping-up operation, during which time I ran out of
algae to fuel my oxygenators. My colony began filling with carbon dioxide
quicker than a soda-stream factory that’s been struck by a tsunami.

With the
situation rapidly shifting from inconvenience to emergency, I quickly dug a
shaft that led down to an air pocket surrounded by algae blocks. Sadly, I
failed to notice that the pocket was a vacuum, and when two of my Duplicants
broke through and dropped into the cavern, they suffocated. Now without enough
manpower to refill all my oxygenators, the rest of the colony would have
suffered a similar fate, had I not switched the game off in defeat beforehand.

My ill-fated
plumbing project demonstrates how easily and unexpectedly a situation can
spiral out of control. As more duplicants arrive and you consume resources
faster, you need to expand your colony more quickly, which also makes it more
dangerous. It becomes harder and harder to juggle all the spinning plates, to
oversee larger construction projects that ensure the colony’s long-term
survival, while ensuring that the basics are being tended to.

I like
Oxygen Not Included; there’s plenty of satisfaction to be had in constructing
your colony, and the gas mechanic adds a challenging and ever-shifting puzzle
element to the layout of your colony and building new rooms. It’s also fairly easy
to get to grips with, which further helps it stand out in a genre dominated by complex
and forbidding designs.

That said, I
don’t love it yet, and I’m not finding it as captivating as I have Klei’s
previous efforts. I think the problem, somewhat fittingly, is that Oxygen Not
Included is a little short on atmosphere. Thematically, it isn’t as strong as
either Don’t Starve or Invisible Inc, lacking the weirdness of the first and
the character of the second. Moreover, as I already mentioned, it doesn’t contain
the systemic depth of the likes of RimWorld.

None of this
makes it a bad game by any means, just one that’s a bit short on identity, and
the gas mechanic, while interesting, isn’t quite enough to make up for that.
Fortunately, another thing Klei excel at is Early Access projects, having
served both Don’t Starve and Invisible Inc brilliantly during their pre-release
states. If Oxygen Not Included receives a similar service, it could still end up
being quite special.